When Li Fang and her family heard the news, their legs went limp. With everyone’s help, they came over, their grief evident on their faces.

  The people who came with them felt indignance on their behalf.

  “Bai Qiang even claimed that Li Tao ran away and came to cause trouble at your house every day. He also extorted a large sum of money. In the end, it turned out that she died.”

  “Yeah, that’s so pitiful.”

  Li Fang’s face was numb from crying. She didn’t want to hear this at all.

  She hadn’t seen the corpse and hadn’t confirmed it yet. However, her intuition told her that it was her sister.

  She had known that her sister wouldn’t run away. She had had a bad feeling back then, but still, she had hoped that her sister had indeed run away to live somewhere else.

  Now, she knew that was just her imagination.

  They soon saw the corpse. Although it was decomposed, her family members immediately recognized the clothes as Li Tao’s.

  It was really Li Tao. The Li Family members cried until they collapsed. When they finished crying, they rushed to Bai Qiang’s house and beat him up.

  “Did you kill Li Tao, you evil person?!”

  Bai Qiang struggled and denied that it was him. He claimed that he didn’t know what was going on either.

  When the police came, they also suspected him and asked him to cooperate with the investigation. Bai Qiang still wanted to deny it, but soon, he couldn’t anymore.

  They had found evidence.

  Seeing that they had found evidence, Bai Qiang stopped pretending. He said, so what if he had beaten her to death? This was his wife!

  Bai Qiang wasn’t remorseful at all, nor did he feel any guilt.

  “If my own wife is disobedient, I’ll beat her to death. It’s difficult for an innocent official to settle family affairs. Who can meddle in that? I buried her on a private hilly land, which is as good as burying her in the Bai Family’s graveyard. What else do you want?”

  Bai Qiang was very arrogant. In the end, the law told him that yes, they could meddle in that.

  Bai Qiang was quickly convicted. The law told him that in this new society, anyone who beat someone to death had to pay with their life. Even if they’d killed their own wife.

  His case caused a stir in the surrounding villages and became an illustrative case. Bai Qiang was given a heavy sentence. It was said that such crimes had to be severely punished in order to resolutely put an end to such matters in the future. The newspapers even wrote special reports about it.

  \r \r \r

  Bai Qiang had been indignant at first and didn’t feel that he was at fault until he found out that Li Tao had been pregnant.

  After the forensic examination, Li Tao was discovered to be two months pregnant.

  When Bai Qiang heard the news, he finally calmed down and came clean about the details of the crime.

  Killing Li Tao had actually been an accident.

  Bai Qiang used to really like Li Tao, but later on, everyone kept saying that he wasn’t worthy of Li Tao. He had been feeling uncomfortable, and his pride as a man had made him grow to hate Li Tao.

  After his parents had passed away, he’d started acting recklessly. He usually treated Li Tao very badly, stepping on her and belittling her. Also, he would often torture her in the bedroom, making her unable to get pregnant as a result.

  Their lack of children then became Li Tao’s fault, allowing Bai Qiang to completely gain the upper hand. However, he hadn’t expected Li Tao to stand up again when she’d started earning money by working for Mu Jingzhe.

  Everyone had started praising Li Tao again and asked Bai Qiang to work harder. When Bai Qiang had heard those harsh words once more, he had felt disgruntled even though Li Tao would give him all her salary. When Li Tao had asked him not to idle around again, Bai Qiang, who had drunk a bit of wine, had recklessly hit Li Tao and eventually beaten her to death.

  After killing Li Tao, Bai Qiang hadn’t turned himself in. He had come up with an idea—to say that Li Tao had run away with someone.

  Many people in the countryside ran away. Some of them really ran away, but who knew what really happened to the rest? They might have been killed and buried. Anyway, it was fine as long as everyone believed it.

  After a few years, some made-up news of her could be sent back to the village, and that way, she would ‘live’ forever. It was that simple.

  Bai Qiang cleverly made use of this tactic and succeeded.

  This success made Bai Qiang even more confident. He felt that he could take it a step further.

  Life without a wife was truly hard. There was no one to cook, no one to earn money, no one to take care of him, and no one to vent on.

  Seeing that his sister-in-law, Li Fang, could also earn money and was good-looking, Bai Qiang had finally set his sights on Li Fang.

  He had planned everything. He would belittle Li Fang from the start so that she would have to work like an ox and take care of him in the future.

  He had come up with a brilliant idea, but Li Fang had refused. Thus, he had extorted money from her. He had even thought of living off the Li Family for the rest of his life, but he hadn’t expected Li Tao’s corpse to be flushed out.

  Li Tao’s incident came to an end in a spectacular manner. This summer vacation was too eventful.

  Because of Li Tao, Shao Nan started reading the law book again. Mu Jingzhe didn’t stop him.

  After a delay of a few days, Mu Jingzhe took the children to the county city’s art school.

  Ji Buwang was worried sick. “You never came. I was ready to come looking for you.”

  “I was delayed by something.” Mu Jingzhe looked at Ji Buwang. “Do you know where I live?”

  Ji Buwang nodded honestly. “Yes, it’s in the student book.”

  Mu Jingzhe: “Alright then.”

  After taking the children to learn a foreign language, Ji Buwang followed Mu Jingzhe around and stared at her without even blinking.

  It had been a while since he had stared at her, and Mu Jingzhe wasn’t used to it.

  “Ji Buwang, can you control yourself a little?”

  “I just haven’t seen you in so many days. I want to make up for all those days.”

  “If you can see me, you might be able to see others too. Why don’t you give it a try?”

  Ji Buwang’s eyes lit up. “I’ve thought of this issue too. I was able to see you after our heads bumped into each other, so I speculated that I might be able to see someone by bumping our heads together.”

  “And?”

  “Uncle Li and I bumped our heads against each other twice, but it was useless. Uncle Li fainted from the collision and even said that he wanted to vomit. He refused to bump his head against mine again.”

  Ji Buwang rubbed his head and sighed. “That was quite a painful bump for me too. The swelling on my head only subsided in the past two days.”

  Mu Jingzhe: “…”

  Uncle Li was too pitiful. Could he have suffered a concussion due to the collision?

  Mu Jingzhe quickly tried to persuade him. “It seems that this method won’t work. You’d better not bump your head against other people’s heads in the future. Otherwise, you might hit your head or die before you get to see any faces.”

  Ji Buwang sighed. “Uncle Li said the same thing. He was afraid that I would fall into a coma again and told me not to bump heads with anyone.”

  “Remember to be obedient.” Mu Jingzhe then felt curious. “How long were you unconscious for?”

  “Four years.” Ji Buwang smiled. “There was an accident. I have quite a history of accidents. Or perhaps I am a jinx. My parents died, but I survived.

  “Last time, my brother died, and I was again the one who survived.”

  Ji Buwang’s tone was very calm, but Mu Jingzhe could hear a lot of sorrow in it.

  “Don’t talk nonsense. What jinx? These are all feudal superstitions.” Mu Jingzhe didn’t expect Ji Buwang to be so pitiful and couldn’t help but pat his arm.

  At that moment, they were downstairs. Shao Xi, who was sitting by the window, happened to see them.

  When he saw Mu Jingzhe and Ji Buwang so close and noticed that Mu Jingzhe had even taken the initiative to touch Ji Buwang, Shao Xi instantly tensed up and couldn’t help but recall Shao Dong’s words.

  Did Mommy like Teacher Ji? Would she marry Teacher Ji in the future and have children with him?

  A sense of dread washed over Shao Xi. Was he going to have new younger siblings so soon?